Challenge Week 5: Newspaper mani

I was going to post this  yesterday, but as the last in the family, I am now sick as h***. Luckily I did these nails saturday before it got really bad.

This week's challenge was relatively easy to get done. I had seen different tutorials around the net that does this differently, but most of them involve alcohol. I chose to dip my fingers in alcohol and the press the cutout piece of newspaper on my wet finger, as shown in this tutorial by Cutepolish:

I opted for a slightly more colourful polish than straight up gray, since I thought it would be a little cuter to look at. Further more I chose clippings from a paper commercial which is in colour, just to see if it was possible to transfer other than just basic print.

As base colour I chose a-englands Guinevere, a lovely pale grayed out lilac:

And here is the result:

Here you can really see the different print on my thumb - it was a red circle with yellow text.

I think I will do coloured prints again, that was a big succes I think.

This was a very fun one, though I couldn't get a really solid print on any of the nails except my thumb.
What do you think of newspaper manis? I think I like them - a lot!

My husband, the unwittingly enabler

I love my husband very much, never as much as when he decides to make me happy ( even though he obviously don't get this particular obsession of mine) by giving me nail polish gift certificates for birthday and Christmas:

My birthday present arrived the second week of january:

360, Locavore, Orbis Non Suficit, Mismas

And then a couple of days later, my christmas present:

Ozotic 505, Hits Dionisio, Hits Tango, Glitter Gal 10 to Midnight

Lovely Lynnderellas and Glitter Tamer (looking forward to see how good this works, despite the stink)

He shakes his head and smiles wryly but still lends a listening ear to my polish related ramblings...I tell you, that is true love, that is!!

Challenge Week 4: Plaid Mani

Finally!!! A challenge nail art mani that actually doesn't have major fail in it :D.

My inspiration for this week's manicure was this:

And this:

I really like the Burberry Plaid, and I thought it could be fairly easily done - and I was actually right this time. I didn't swear a lot during this and I believe that I have actually slightly improved my free hand skills.

The colours I have used this time are these:

Cult Nails: Cruisin' Nude, nails inc: Oxford Circus, a-england: Camelot, China Glaze: Phat Santa, nails inc: Floral St.

And this is the result:

And a detailed look:

I must say I am over the moon about this design, seen from a slight distance it looks really cool! I really didn't think I would succeed with this after watching tutorials due to my earlier free hand failures, haha.

Thanks for looking and please do leave a message if you have any notes on this.

Thoughts on giveaways and what blog sales can lead to...

It is funny how I always enter giveaways with some disheartening thoughts, never more so when I enter those amazing ones that Traci hosts over at TheTraceFacePhiles.

I think I started following her back in September where she had 1800 followers with a couple of giveaways already running. Within a very short time she hosted giveaways for every new 100 followers. I remember entering most of them up to 2200 and thinking with that many followers chances were very slim to say the least to actually win one of them.

I had almost forgotten which ones I had entered, and what prizes I had chosen in those that had several winners.

And then it turns out that I was one of the winners of her 1900 follower giveaway - and I won the Color Club Foiled set, which made me giddy for several hours. I of course contacted Traci immediately - I wasn't going to loose that lovely prize.

It took some time to get that special package, which is due to the overall awesomeness of Traci. She really is an International Polish Fairy. I'll return to that in a moment.

You see, here in Denmark it can at times be difficult to be a polish addict. We don't have all those great cheap drugstore brands and generally nail polish is expensive, even the cheap ones cost around four times as much as the really cheap ones in America. Besides that, a lot of the e-tailers in America don't ship internationally, so we have to do our shopping at ebay when we want brands like Finger Paints, Santee, Klean Color, Barielle, Jordana and I could go on and on.

So this is where blog sales get interesting for someone like me, because then you don't have to pay extortionate prises for your nail polish :D. Furthermore, you get to know some really great women who really understand your addiction.


Well back to Traci...Prior to my win I had bought some polishes in her blog sale so I thought I could very politely ask if she could do me a favour. I am glitter crazy but that also means I go through top coat like there is no tomorrow. But on several blogs I had read about Gelous and I wanted to try it but it wasn't available internationally. So the favour was for her to purchase a couple of bottles for me to send with my giveaway prize - and she graciously accepted my request!!

So she had to buy these on my behalf before she could ship my prize and then we hit christmas and then USPS had a back log that seemed to last forever. But in early January this was in my mail:

I really look forward to trying all these beauties but with all my haulage lately I might not get around to these right away.

Challenge Week 3: Colour Block Mani

I must say I am surprising myself - I am now in week 3 of the 52 week challenge and I am actually keeping up. It is fun and educational for me since a lot of what is going on is totally new to me. Which is especially true with this challenge.

I was a little unsure how I should go about it since we've already established that my free hand skills leaves a lot to be desired. But thinking about it I decided that the best way to do this was to combine the colour blocking with a tape mani, though this would also be uncharted territory. So off I went and once more had to admit defeit.

Point in case:

What I really forgot was that the formula on these Cult Nails colours are a little special. They are very jelly like with the first coat and totally opaque in second. But that really got in the way of getting a good result - the pink and blue are nowhere near the opacity I was aiming at. Then take in to consideration that though having dapped the tape numerous times I was still able to peel layers of the yellow polish=epic fail.

And then to add insult to injury, I really wasn't succeeding in getting those lovely sharp lines going. The tape really didn't like to cooperate - and smudge city here we come...though there are some huge problems here I really like what I was aiming at and hopefully I will be able to do something more accomplished at a later date.

These were the colours that I used, they are all from Cult Nails and extremely limited - though Maria has been talking about having them all as part of future collections:

Feel Me Up - a butter cup yellow though on my fingers it looks like egg yolk.

Bad Devious Nature - a true pink that I really like.

Tied Up - Smurf Blue!! Beware of Stains.

I really enjoyed this and with some practice I think I could actually do this without total failure.

Challenge Week 2: French Tip Nails

So, I am NOT a fan of the French Manicure. I think I have seen too many done nails where it screams fake nails, done badly to ever really be won over. But the concept of using two accentuating or opposing colours and use them in a French Mani...see that is something I think is great. So with that in mind I knew exactly which colours to choose.

I bought Yves Saint Laurent Manicure Couture No. 1: Belle de Jour at a sale in Magasin (something similar to Harvey Nicholls and Selfridges) in spring, and I have worn it once - and what a shame, 'cause those colours are quite beautiful - a clean turquoise and a  true purple, leaning a teensy bit to the blue side.

And I am sad to say they both were agonisingly hard to photograph correctly, both colours are way too blue, so beside my massive free hand fail, the colours aren't too good either.

*Note to self: Always use nail guides when doing french tip manis*

I also need to say something about the brushes in these. Normally I adore YSL polish, because of opacity, formula, ease of application. But these brushes - argh. They made them slightly angular in order to make free hand application easy. NOT so much I tell you when they cut them with so little precision. I had different lenghts on both brushes, but not in an angle!! And the hairs dragged through the polish which is quite visible in the pictures. So one really need to practice with these, which one hasn't!!!

Well off the soap box and on to the pictures - that is what you are here for :D

Artificial light, slightly yellow. As you can see, more blue than turquoise. The purple looks almost like this.

Artificial light, cooler in tone. And the other hand.

So that was the second week, I am actually keeping up :)

Btw, my Week one post will be edited during this week, where you can see all the lovelies I used for that bling-tastic manicure...

A-England One Year Anniversary Sale

The lovely Adina Bodana, Mastermind behind the very succesful indie brand A-England, is celebrating her One Year Anniversary with a marvelous promo: Get 30 % of the entire The Mythicals collection.
Hurry over to her webshop and order yours now. Use the promo code: anniversary during check out (you need to click on the summary link during the check out process to find the field to fill in).

You won't regret spending the money, her polishes are beyond wonderful, I have six of them already and have pre ordered from her coming collection. You can follow A-England on facebook, Adina announces her promos there first, she is very active and open towards her growing fanbase.

Sneak Peak at my Week 1 manicure

I have been playing around with my dslr tonight in order to get good pictures - but got distracted by the hubby, Sherlock called out to us. So I didn't get to edit them for blogging purposes.
But I did take some pictures earlier today with my mobile phone:

Glitter nailgasm on my fingers!!!

A year's worth of manicures

So after last night's blog post I was surfing around and went over to look at Polished Criminails 52 week challenge. "Sounds interesting" I thought and then went over to Jenna at I'm Still Thinking, since she seemed to be the one to get this ball rolling - and now here I am, signed up for the Challenge.

I have tweaked the list a bit since I am danish and we don't have the same tradition for 4th of July and Thanksgiving (I know, I know, there is the celebration at Rebild Bakker, but I wanted to do some themes around the end of the German occupation and our constitution :D)

So without further ado here is the Challenge list:

1. Jan. 1st - "Make it Sparkle" Mani.
- Pull out your Best looking glitter, flakie or holo and bring in the New Year with a "Bang".
2. Jan. 8th - French Tip Mani.
3. Jan. 15th - Colour Block Mani.
4. Jan. 22nd - Plaid Mani.
5. Jan. 29th - Newspaper Mani.
6. Feb. 5th - Half-moon Mani.
7. Feb. 12th - "Valentine's Day" Mani.
8. Feb. 19th - Corset Mani.
9. Feb. 26th - "Vintage" Mani.
10. Mar. 4th - Polka Dot Mani
11. Mar. 11th - "St. Patrick's Day" Mani.
12. Mar. 18th - Skittle Mani.
13. Mar. 25th - Ruffian Mani.
14. Apr. 1st - Striped Mani.
15. Apr. 8th - "Easter Day" Mani.
16. Apr. 15th - Dotticure Mani.
17. Apr. 22nd - "Earth Appreciation" Mani.
18. Apr. 29th - Cartoon Mani.
19. May. 6th -  Freedom Mani .
20. May. 13th - Bows Mani.
21. May. 20th - Fruit Mani.
22. May. 27th - Splatter Mani.
23. Jun. 3rd -  Constitution Mani.
24. Jun. 10th - Flag Mani.
25. Jun. 17th - Pride/Rainbow Mani.
26. Jun. 24th - Neon Mani.
27. July. 1st -  Floral Mani.
28. July. 8th - Gradient Mani.
29. July. 15th - "Rockstar" Mani.
30. July. 22th - Water Marble Mani.
31. July. 29th - Crackle Mani.
32. Aug. 5th - Needle Marble Mani.
33. Aug. 12th - Galaxy Mani.
34. Aug. 19th - "Bling" Mani.
35. Aug. 26th - Cupcake Mani.
36. Sept. 2nd - Tape Mani.
37. Sept. 9th - "We Remember 9/11" Mani.
38. Sept. 16th - Metallic/Magnetic Mani.
39. Sept. 23rd - Dry Marble Mani.
40. Sept. 30th - Animal Print Mani.
41. Oct. 7th - Patchwork Mani.
42. Oct. 14th - "Pink 4 Breast Cancer Awareness" Mani.
43. Oct. 21st - Spider Web Mani.
44. Oct. 28th - Halloween Mani.
45. Nov. 4th - Tribal Mani.
46. Nov. 11th - "Moustache, 4 Movember; Prostate Cancer Awareness" Mani.
47. Nov. 18th - Ombre Mani.
48. Nov. 25th - Feather Mani.
49. Dec. 2nd - Glitter Sandwich Mani.
50. Dec. 9th - Snowflake Mani.
51. Dec. 16th - Red Mani.
52. Dec. 23rd - Christmas Mani.
53. Dec. 30th/31st - you've learnt enough; go all out and show 2O13, what its all about!


The thing is, I haven't done a lot of what is in store, but damn have I read about them all :D - so now I am really looking forward to try myself and see if I can acquire the skills needed *already fears marble mani in all it's different shapes *. 
Please have a look-see every once in a week during 2012.
Btw, these are my fellow partners in crime:

Rachel-Karina @ Polished Criminails

Jenna @ I'm Still Thinking
Lissa @ Lissa's Nail Blog
Charlotte @ Charlottes-Nails
Nicel @ Operation: Nail It!

LizMarie @ I'm Simply Complex

Caitlin @ Addicted 2 Nails

Sarah @ PrncessSarah02

Kristen @ Darling Nails

KB @ No More Nail Biting

Shally @ Polished & Not Quite Put Together
Fun With My Nail Polish
Laurie @ Lauriestrodes Fun With Nails

Cindy-y @ Square Polish

Arielle @ Only Always Soccermom

Liz @ Nothing But Nail Polish

Hurr Did, Nails Did

Olivia @ Olivia Writes

Now excuse me while I dig out a glitter, flakie or holo *giggles*

I'm Still Thinking has an awesome giveaway...

and I am entering - there are a lot of little beauties there that I would like to get my dirty little fingers on ;)

Go see for yourself here but be aware that some of the polishes are used. I don't care about  such minor details, hehe.

a-england will be the ruin of me...

Her next collection, The Legend, is out of this world, just check out what Eugenia has been showcasing today:

Go forth to Ommorphia Beauty Bar and get a nailgasm!!

And be amazed by Adina Bodana's genius when you read the background for this collection. Epic I tell you!!

Long time, no write...and a possible New Years Resolution

December has been all kinds of crazy - and left no time for updating my stash list or my swatches.
Hopefully I will have a wee bit more time the next couple of months :D

I would like to have time to do a weekly post with several swatches in during 2012 - hopefully I won't be too busy, so let this be my resolution for this year...

And a light box, I forgot to mention the light box - which I hope to build myself during January...